by Marc Cameron
49
Nada. Zip. Zilch.
No, this was worse than zero.
Special Agent Callahan pounded the hood of her Ford Expedition and screamed at the night sky. A whip-poor-will answered her back from the line of cedars that grew along the fence beyond the twenty-two other police cars. The creepy bird was probably confused by all the strobing red-and-blues. Callahan had read somewhere that whip-poor-wills could sense death. This one sure knew its business.
The cartel guy tied to the tree on the side of Emilio Zambrano’s ranch house had been dead a couple hours at least, but not quite long enough for the fire that killed him to burn itself out. What was left of his head glowed like the poster for the Nicolas Cage Ghost Rider movie. His face was unrecognizable—gone, really—but they’d be able to get one set of fingerprints. The corpse was missing a hand, probably since birth. That should help to identify him. The killer had wrapped the guy’s head in what looked like a bath towel, taking care to leave the area around the mouth and nose exposed so he wouldn’t suffocate and die too quickly. One of the crime scene techs said he’d seen it before. They’d doused the towel in lamp oil so it burned more slowly and lit the turban from the top to make a human candle. A slow and extremely painful way to die.
Maybe Caruso’s scary friend had done this. He certainly had the eyes for it. Callahan was pretty sure he’d whacked the woman in the swimming pool, and the dead guy by the grave. Some would call what he did a service, like taking out the garbage. But there were lines you just didn’t cross. She would catch him eventually, and that was sad because he was making a difference.
Just hours before, Fort Worth PD had received a bizarre Skype confession from a guy who was obviously under duress from someone off camera. Even conservative Texas courts would throw out that confession. According to the FWPD detective, Parrot Villanueva had been stabbed to death with a screwdriver. Maybe the sobbing confessor had whacked him. Captive girls had been rescued in both those cases.
She couldn’t help but believe that if the vigilante had killed the one-handed guy, Zambrano’s body would have been tied to the tree along with him. No, this guy had committed some infraction against the cartel. Zambrano had murdered him for it and then vanished. Callahan would catch them both, Zambrano and Caruso’s friend. Eventually.
She stared at the shadow of the smoldering corpse across the yard and smacked the Expedition’s hood a final time for good measure. A couple of the Dallas County SWAT guys gave her better-luck-next-time shrugs. Her logical brain said they were only trying to assuage the guilt of her failure. But Callahan wanted to feel guilty.
Special Agent John Olson came out of the house on his cell, squinted at all the flashing lights, and then started toward Callahan when he found her. He dropped the phone back in his pocket and approached tentatively.
She gave him a hard look that he didn’t deserve. “What?”
“No ID yet on the dead guy,” he said. “But get this. Witnesses where that guy got killed up the street from you reported seeing a Hispanic male hanging around just before the murder—and he was missing a hand.”
Callahan just nodded.
“Anyway,” Olson said, “I thought you’d want to know.” He shot a sympathetic look to Caruso, who’d taken refuge in the shadow of a big pecan tree on the other side of the Ford. “Okay, then. I’ll leave you guys to it.” He turned and went back inside the house.
The ranch was about as close to the middle of nowhere as one could get and still be within an hour of the population centers of Dallas–Fort Worth. Rolled bales of Bermuda grass hay moldered in shaggy fields surrounding the two-story brick house, remnants of some prior year’s cutting. The gate had been unlocked and open—which should have been a sign that they were all wasting their time.
SWAT breached, giving Zambrano and anyone else inside precisely zero seconds to come to the door since there was a steaming body in his backyard. EOD cleared the residence once SWAT found it was empty. FBI forensic techs were inside now, combing the place for everything from cigarette butts to pubic hair. They would find something, they always did, but that took time, and Callahan didn’t have much of that. Zambrano could run a hell of a lot faster unencumbered. The girls would be the first things to go, if he hadn’t killed them already. The ranch was big, and they’d have to wait until daylight to search for graves.
She’d called in the assistance of twenty-five other law enforcement officers from six different jurisdictions, including the DEA, the U.S. Marshals, and the entire CAC Task Force. Six of the responders were Dallas County SWAT. Everyone not on perimeter or helping Forensics was in the process of slipping off their armored-plate carriers or stowing long guns and ballistic shields. They all averted their eyes when they walked through the front yard, afraid they might bring down the wrath of the redheaded banshee.
This entire day had been a colossal waste of time.
Eddie Feng was still in a medically induced coma and likely suffering from permanent brain damage. Gusano, the other idiot from the steakhouse attack, was also in the hospital, chained to his bed with a leg iron. He was conscious but badly concussed. His brain hadn’t been one of the brightest stars in the firmament even before Callahan had bashed him in the face with the pepper grinder. Neither man was going to be much help.
An anonymous tip came in five minutes after she’d dropped Caruso off at his hotel, pointing them to Emilio Zambrano’s ranch south of Granbury. The call had led them to this failure. To make matters worse, Magdalena Rojas was nowhere to be found. She’d been here, though. Callahan could feel it.
• • •
Clark lay belly-down on the scrubby grass and loose caliche stone. He’d checked the place for fire ants and other stickers, stingers, and stinkers while he set up his hide. It looked clear, but things changed by the second when you were lying in the dark. This was Texas, and it was impossible not to think about rattlesnakes. There were certainly enough rocks and roots for them, but the night was too cool for snakes to be crawling around. At least that’s what he told himself.
A wire hung from his left ear, connecting the earbud to the phone in his pocket. He expected Caruso to call him with an update any minute. Five hundred feet below, down the rocky hillside covered with yucca and scrub cedar, a new Airstream trailer sat nestled under a copse of live oaks. There was a chicken coop and a doghouse, but no sign of chickens or dogs. Clark had been watching the trailer for more than an hour. Dorian Palmetto had lawyered up the moment Fort Worth PD booted the door to his room, but he’d given Clark this address for Raul Pacheco. It made sense that Matarife might try to hide out with his father.
Clark knew he should have mentioned this location when he’d called in the information on Zambrano—but the legal hurdles of getting a warrant for one location on a tip were steep enough. He decided he’d give Callahan and Caruso the one that would save the girl while he paid a little visit to Matarife. He had a vague plan of what he would do when the Slaughterer showed up—if he showed up. It would take a little coordination and there were still some kinks to work out, but that was par. No plan survived first contact completely intact.
There was no moon, leaving the sky to the stars alone. Even under these present circumstances, Clark couldn’t help but glance up. It wouldn’t be such a bad life to teach the stars to his grandson—to take the time to look up. His own father had taught him the major constellations. He’d learned the navigational stars in the Navy—Polaris, Sirius, Rigel—
His phone began to buzz, the noise pushing him flatter against the ground, though there was probably no one for miles to see or hear him.
“Speak,” he whispered, kicking up a puff of dirt and dry grass with his breath.
Surprisingly, it was not Caruso but Jack Junior.
“New wrinkle,” Ryan began, and then ran down the latest developments in Buenos Aires. Clark in turn let him know about Lily Chen and her connection to the Sun Yee O
n triad and Zambrano’s cartel. “Makes sense why Vincent was in Texas now,” Ryan said. “John, I’m thinking Japan might well be about to become a very dangerous place. Maybe we should contact my father and tell him not to go.”
Clark tried—and failed—to stifle a quiet chuckle. “Your dad doesn’t respond well to mights and maybes. I can’t remember a single time when Jack Ryan Senior or Junior listened to me when I warned either of them not to do something because it was dangerous.” More serious now, he whispered, “But I’ll make some calls and let the Secret Service know through channels that there’s a possible threat. I’m sure they’ll want to talk to any of those people who were around when the bomb went off in BA. I trust your Japanese intel officer will let her superiors know. Make sure she has the aliases for Chen that Gavin found. With any luck, they’ll grab him coming into the country.”
“Those are only the aliases we know about,” Jack said. “I’m not counting on it.”
“Me either,” Clark said, peering into the darkness. “Looks like you guys need to go to Japan. I’ll clear it with Gerry.”
“Ding’s on the phone with him now,” Jack said.
“Good,” Clark said. “Don’t get in the way of the Japanese, but it sounds like their interest may be with the Korean woman. You guys make Chen a priority.”
“Roger that—”
Clark’s phone chirped with another incoming call. He rolled on his side to look at the caller ID. “Anything else?”
“Nope,” Jack said.
“I have Dom on the other line,” Clark said, and ended the call with Ryan.
“Speak,” he said again.
“Can you talk?”
“Go.”
“Zambrano and Chen cleared out before we got here,” Caruso said. “Left behind a torched body. Probably one of their crew.”
Clark groaned. “No Magdalena Rojas?”
“Nothing, boss,” Caruso said. “Oh, I should tell you, though, that Callahan is hell-bent on throwing your ass in jail when she catches you.”
“It’s been tried before,” Clark said.
Far in the distance, a set of headlights arced through the night as a lone vehicle drove along the narrow farm-to-market road.
“Anyway,” Caruso said, “we’ll see what Forensics finds, but I’m not hopeful. All the bad guys are lawyering up as fast as we arrest them. We’re running out of leads.”
The oncoming vehicle slowed and turned up the narrow two-track that led to the empty Airstream.
“Sit tight,” Clark said. “I may have more information for you shortly.”
Caruso started to say something else, but Clark ended the call and began to work his way down the hill.
50
The man who arrived at the Airstream that was tucked back among the oak trees was at least sixty, and probably a little older. Clark was less than fifty feet away, watching from behind the doghouse, lying on his belly yet again. He looked at the photo of Ernie Pacheco that Caruso had sent him, and guessed this guy to be his father. Pacheco senior didn’t even go inside the trailer. Instead, he grabbed a shovel that was leaning against the makeshift wooden porch and headed for the chicken coop. Ducking down through a small doorway, he disappeared inside with the shovel, then came out a short time later carrying not only the shovel but also a large black duffel—and got back in his truck and drove away.
Travel cash, Clark thought. All his compatriots dropping dead around him had rattled his cage. He needed money to run, and he’d sent his daddy to get it for him.
Clark jogged around the base of the hill to his rental car, reaching it about the same time he saw the lights of Pacheco Senior’s pickup turn back onto the farm-to-market road. Clark stayed well back, following with his lights off and keeping his foot off the brakes until the pickup got on the highway. Traffic was light, but at least there were other cars on the road, making it far easier to tail.
He didn’t have to go far. Twenty minutes after he’d left the chicken coop, the pickup pulled up in front of a white stone house in a rural neighborhood of five- and ten-acre ranchettes on the outskirts of the small community of Glen Rose, about fifty miles southwest of Fort Worth. Clark killed his lights and watched from two lots up. He wished he’d brought some NVGs, but a nearby streetlight, out front of Pacheco’s place, gave him just enough light to make out what was happening.
Pacheco Senior didn’t seem all that thrilled about being a bagman. He cast worried glances over his shoulder when he got out of the truck, the kind of looks people used to bleed off nervous energy, but didn’t really see anything. A shadowed figure opened the door and then stepped out on the porch.
“Hello, Ernie,” Clark whispered. He’d stopped thinking of this idiot as Matarife. It imbued him with too much worth if he had a spooky nickname.
The old man all but threw the duffel bag at him and turned to go. Ernie looked like he might follow him back to the pickup, but he raised his hands in surrender and took the bag back inside.
“Not the reunion you were hoping for,” Clark said, an idea forming in his mind.
The pickup turned back onto the main road at the same time Clark pulled down the short drive to the white stone house. He parked his rental on the far left of the driveway, making it more difficult for Ernie to see it unless he came outside. He moved quickly, hoping to take advantage of the old man’s recent departure, banking on Ernie thinking his dad had forgotten something and returned—maybe even to say good-bye.
There was no peephole, just a floor-to-ceiling window to the right of the door. Clark stayed to the left, out of the line of sight. He beat on the door with the flat of his hand, not too hard, but like someone who knew the occupant had just walked inside. Pacheco opened the door a half-second later.
Police Tasers deliver a fifty-thousand-volt shock for a five-second duration. Clark shot Pacheco with a civilian model called a Bolt that gave him a thirty-second ride. The instant he pulled the trigger, a compressed nitrogen canister propelled two barbed steel darts from the nose of the device on coils of whisker-thin wire. Deploying at an angle, one dart struck Pacheco just over his left nipple, and the other in the center of his right thigh. The device chattered as it discharged electricity. Pacheco came up on his toes, arms rigid, teeth clenched, and toppled backward on the tile entry like a felled tree, body arched on his heels and the back of his head.
Thirty seconds gave Clark plenty of time to duct-tape Pacheco’s wrists behind his back, using several turns of tape to connect his hands and feet, bending his knees almost up to his buttocks and effectively hog-tying him. Next Clark stuffed a wadded paper towel into the man’s mouth and then covered that with a strip of tape before dumping him into the trunk of the rental car. Two minutes later, Clark was driving north on Highway 144.
Traffic was almost nonexistent, and he reached his destination on the outskirts of Fort Worth in just under an hour. The rental car bounced as he turned off the main street into a deserted industrial park. Clark did his best to hit every pothole and bump, bringing a chorus of muffled cries from behind the backseat.
He used a pair of bolt cutters to defeat the cheap padlock and pushed open the gate, closing it behind him after he’d driven through so as not to rouse the suspicions of any roving police or security patrols—though he doubted there would be any. This area didn’t have anything worth stealing.
Clark parked the rental beside a nondescript metal building, tucking it in behind row after row of bright red fifty-five-gallon rubber bins full of old oil filters and other industrial waste. Whistling to himself, he got out and slammed the door, pausing a few seconds so his passenger could anticipate—and worry about—what was going to happen next.
Clark stood off to the side as he opened the trunk. There was always a chance that Pacheco had wriggled free of his bonds. Still tied, he gazed up at Clark in the red glow of the taillights. His eyes sparkled with abject horror.
“You scared?” Clark asked.
Pacheco nodded emphatically.
Clark gave him a wink. “Kiddo,” he said, “you ain’t seen nothin’ yet.”
He hauled the terrified man out of the trunk and dragged him by his feet along the gravel. It would do him good to watch the process as it progressed.
Clark had never been here before. That would have left him at too great a risk of being recognized. He had, however, studied the place at length through the satellite images from Google Earth. He knew that the iron contraption the size of a train engine beside the tin building was an industrial incinerator. He also knew that the controls were located in a square blue box on the side of a steel chute where employees of the plant loaded refuse to be destroyed. What the Google images did not show was that a fire from the day before still glowed inside the belly of the incinerator, the thermometer on the box still reading 600 degrees.
A placard above warned that temperatures should not drop below 1,600 degrees when refuse was being burned. The company’s website advertised its ability to destroy industrial and hospital waste at temperatures exceeding 1,900 degrees.
Clark studied the directions for a moment, surprised to see there was no lock or computer key code, just a simple on/off switch to start the flow of gas to the primary burners and two buttons on either side of the box that needed to be depressed simultaneously.
He turned the switch, then counted to three before pressing both buttons. On the ground at his feet, Pacheco gave a muffled cry behind the duct tape as the gas inside the chamber ignited with a hollow whoompf!